Cleveland Browns: Mike Pettine trying to tune out noise, focus on building team

By
Jeff Schudel, The News-Herald & The Morning Journal

Monday, February 24, 2014

INDIANAPOLIS — Mike Pettine has a mission as the Browns seventh full-time head coach since 1999: Quiet the noise that has nothing to do with what happens between the sidelines on Sunday afternoons.
It’s a tall order one day after the biggest story of the combine revealed the Browns explored trading for 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh — a story the 49ers deny, but the Browns say is true.
Part of that noise is also the fact Joe Banner was fired as CEO and Mike Lombardi as general manager after Pettine was hired as head coach on Jan. 23.
“That is potentially an accurate statement,” Pettine said when asked if there is more “noise” in Cleveland than in other NFL cities. “I’d like to think it’s going to get quiet. That’s my goal, is to quiet the noise. The sooner I get off this podium and can go in there and start evaluating players and see if we can find some future Cleveland Browns the better.
“I know a lot’s happened, but it’s my goal to get the staff I’ve hired moving forward and we can quiet things down and go about the business of winning football games.”
Pettine got a phone call Feb. 21 from Browns director of communications Zak Gilbert preparing him for the bombshell story broken by ProFootballTalk.com around 5 p.m. As with every other scout, general manager and coach in Indianapolis this week, Pettine is here to evaluate the 335 players at the combine. But none of the other coaches had to answer questions about their team actively trying to trade for some other team’s head coach.
“I got a phone call saying that report was about to come out and I shot the messenger a little bit,” Pettine said. “I asked, ‘How does that affect my tenure as the head coach?’ Obviously, it doesn’t. I think my next sentence, I either used the word flying followed by something, or referenced a part of a rat’s body.
“I think that’s noise. That’s something that has no bearing on my job moving forward. That’s a critical thing. A big part of being an NFL head coach is dealing with the noise, dealing with the distractions. Just add that one to list. When you look at it, (trying to trade for Harbaugh) shows that the organization is committed to getting it turned around, that it would investigate that option. I see that as a positive.”
Pettine said he met with his coaching staff soon after all his assistants were hired and let them know about the challenge they are facing. Since 1991, the first year of Bill Belichick’s five-year reign as head coach, the Browns have had eight head coaches, 133 assistant coaches, made two playoff appearances and won one playoff game (in 1994). They have had only two winning seasons in the expansion era and none since 2007. That’s part of the noise Pettine wants to silence.
“The noise, I try not to listen to it,” Pettine said. “Zak, our PR director brings it to me. I’m not actively pursuing it. I’m in the office, we’re watching tape, we’re grinding away. We’re full speed ahead.
“I told the staff that we’re behind in our first staff meeting. They needed to understand the magnitude of the job we were taking on. Any time you’re trying to turn a franchise around you have to be extraordinary. The challenge for them was ‘How are we going to be different?’ That’s something they took to heart and hopefully we’ll have results to back that up in the fall.”
Pettine was the seventh of 11 coaches interviewed by the Browns, not including Harbaugh, and though he clearly wasn’t their first choice, Pettine said he has no regrets about taking the challenge.
“To me, this is a dream come true,” Pettine said. “I pinch myself every day. I wake up in the morning and say, ‘I’m the head coach of the Cleveland Browns, I can’t wait to get to work.’
“There’s so much negative, you can get overwhelmed by it. I don’t see it that way. I know I’m very blessed to be here, that my path was different and I think that’s helped motivate me. I’m the proverbial guy from the mailroom.”
Pettine was a high school coach for seven years before taking a job as a video assistant with the Ravens in 2002.